Murder in Plain Sight

by Marta Perry

  “We don’t know that. It could have been someone else.”

  “He was the one was there,” Chip said stubbornly. It was unanswerable. It might also be the view a jury would take.

  “Was she dating anyone else?”

  “Hey, I didn’t follow her around. She didn’t tell me everything. She coulda been. Like I say, she wanted better. Always had. She wasn’t gonna end up living in a trailer, trying to feed six kids, like her mother did. That’s why she worked at the inn. Said she met a better class of guys there.”

  “Anybody in particular?” Like the manager, for instance?

  He half turned toward the car. “Don’t know. I got work to do. You want to know anything more about Cherry, you better ask someone else.” His head came up, and something malicious sparked in his eyes. “Ask Trey Morgan. Seems like you two are thick as thieves. Ask him.”

  It was like a dash of cold water in her face. “Why would Trey Morgan know anything about Cherry?”

  “Cherry always said he was her favorite customer. Used to go in there for lunch all the time, talked to her. Gave her big tips.” He turned his back entirely. “Maybe he wanted something in return, y’know?”

  She didn’t know. But the sick feeling in her stomach said she’d have to find out.

  GENEVA WAS INTENT ON getting everyone together to talk about the case that evening, as if they were a committee planning a new playground for the school. Jessica suppressed the impatience that roiled through her and took a chair in the conversational corner of Geneva’s pleasant living room. She’d have to get through this, and then she could make an opportunity to talk to Trey about Chip’s accusation.

  Just the thought of how he might respond, let alone how she would bring it up, was enough to give her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Geneva had admitted to receiving a few unpleasant calls in the wake of her television appearance. That couldn’t help but make Trey even more resentful and less inclined to talk about his association with Cherry.

  Maybe this council of war of Geneva’s was a good thing. It gave her a little more time to think, at any rate.

  She glanced across at Trey. He was handing out coffee cups at Geneva’s direction, his expression as calm as ever, but she had the distinct impression of something under that placid surface—of strong emotion suppressed for the moment but ready to spring forth at the first excuse.

  An excuse like a gesture of comfort turning into a kiss that had seared her heart. She backed away from that subject hurriedly.

  Leo settled on the sofa next to Geneva, and Bobby perched on a straight chair he’d pulled over.

  It was an unconventional group, that was certain. Jessica pulled a file from her briefcase. Back in the office, she might consult with another attorney, a legal assistant, maybe an investigator. Not a nearly retired lawyer, a crusading housewife and a….

  She stopped there, unable to think how to classify Trey. Not a client, though she supposed the money that paid for the defense came from him, as well as his mother. Not an investigator, although he’d been playing that role. If Chip had been speaking the truth, Trey was withholding information. He—

  Trey looked at her, as suddenly as if he’d read her thoughts. Her breath caught, and she slapped the folder onto the table with hands that weren’t quite steady. A sheet of paper slid out.

  “What’s this?” Leo picked it up.

  “A copy of one of the notes. Sorry.” She reached out for it. “I thought I should hang on to it.”

  Leo nodded, sliding his glasses into place to look closely at the note. “Did you ever figure out what this is at the bottom?”

  Trey came to lean over his shoulder. “A hex sign, very stylized. Mom did find one very similar in Dad’s collection.”

  “Did he tell you anything about it?” Leo asked. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this.”

  Geneva shook her head. “I think he said someone gave it to him, but he didn’t say who.”

  “You didn’t mention that when we were talking about the symbol.” What else are you keeping from me, Trey?

  He shrugged, moving back to his chair. “I was distracted.” He met her gaze, as if to say that they both knew what had distracted him.

  “Is the hex sign an Amish thing?” She put the question hurriedly, trying not to look at Trey but finding it impossible.

  “Not Amish.” Leo answered for him. “I’d call the hex sign a Pennsylvania Dutch heritage symbol. Supposedly early settlers brought the idea with them from Germany. You’ll see the same symbols painted on furniture and carved into dower chests.” He turned back to the paper in his hand. “But this…” His frown deepened. “It reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  Bobby cleared his throat. “I was thinking…” His voice died out when everyone looked at him.

  “Yes, Bobby?” Geneva said, her tone encouraging.

  “Chip Fulton,” he said. “He works on my car, so it wouldn’t be hard to strike up a conversation with him about Cherry. I mean, if you want to follow up on him. He might say more to another guy than he would to you.” His eyes fixed on Jessica.

  “That’s probably true.” She’d trust Bobby to be more tactful in that situation than Trey would be.

  “I will, then.” He seemed to slide back as if into the wall, effacing himself. Maybe he felt awkward being drawn into this situation, but after all, he’d been involved from the beginning. The Morgan family clearly trusted him to be discreet.

  “I’ll look into the symbol,” Leo said. “If that’s all right with everyone. Geneva, might I borrow the hex sign from Blake’s collection?”

  “Of course. I’ll get it for you.” Geneva started to rise, but Jessica held up a hand to delay her.

  “One other thing I thought you might help me with. I’d like to find an informal setting to talk with Elizabeth Esch, Thomas’s sister. I had a feeling she knew something she wasn’t willing to say in front of her parents.”

  “I’d love to do that.” Geneva beamed at the idea of something useful. “I’ll tell her we’re making strawberry jam. We can do a lot of chatting over a batch of jam.”

  Jessica half expected a protest from Trey at that, but none came. Maybe, after Geneva’s adventure with the television reporter, he’d given up trying to keep her out of Thomas’s defense.

  “I need to speak with one of Cherry’s coworkers,” she said. “I’ll try to set that up for tomorrow.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Trey said immediately.

  “That’s not necessary.” Being alone in a car with Trey, the echo of Chip’s hints sounding between them…no, she didn’t want that. “I’m sure by tomorrow I’ll be able to drive myself.”

  His jaw tightened. “I’ll drive you,” he repeated, in a voice that didn’t brook argument.

  “Is there anything we’re missing?” Leo said, with an air of shoving himself between two combatants. “Geneva, have you had any more unpleasantness after your interview?” He sounded just as disapproving as Trey had, although not so hot under the collar.

  Geneva’s cheeks grew pink. “Not what I’d call unpleasant. I mean, if people are childish enough to say they don’t want to serve on a committee with me because of my principles, I can’t help that.”

  “Who told you that?” Trey snapped the words. He obviously hadn’t heard about this.

  Geneva’s friends were turning on her. That was one of the things Trey had feared. Geneva might say she wasn’t bothered, but it had to hurt.

  “It doesn’t matter in the least,” she said. “Now, is there anything else I can do, besides arranging a talk with Elizabeth?”

  “Not that I can think of.” If she could keep Geneva out of things, she would, but Geneva had a mind of her own.

  “Strawberry-rhubarb cobbler for dessert,” Geneva said. “I’ll bring it in now. Leo, do you want to help me? And Bobby, there’s a fresh pot of coffee on the stove.”

  Leo followed her toward the kitchen, and Bobby trailed along a
fter them. Trey stood, hand on the back of his chair. She didn’t need to look at him to know that he was still frowning.

  “Maybe I should help—” she began, but Trey stopped her with a look.

  “What’s going on?” His voice was a furious undertone. “Why don’t you want me to drive you to see this coworker of Cherry’s?”

  Because Chip hinted that you might have been involved with her. Because Cherry’s coworker might be in a position to confirm that, and she’d hardly do it with you standing there.

  No, she couldn’t say any of that. Any more than she could come right out and tell him what Chip had said while they were sitting in his house, with his mother likely to come back into the room at any moment.

  “She may talk more freely to another woman. In private,” she added.

  She could feel his gaze on her face, probing.

  “I’ll wait in the truck.” His tone didn’t allow argument. “Are you sure that’s all?”

  “What else could there be?” She stared at him, needing to see his face when she asked the question.

  “Nothing,” he said, but again she had that sense of emotion moving behind the word. “Nothing.”

  “HOW WELL DID YOU KNOW Cherry Wilson?” Jessica tried to keep the question from sounding accusatory. But accusing or not, it wasn’t fair to anyone to avoid the subject because she was afraid of what she might hear.

  She gave a cautious glance across the front seat of the pickup at Trey as they drove toward the mobile-home park where Kristin McGowan lived. He didn’t look particularly bothered by the question.

  Trey shrugged. “As well as you know anyone in a small town. I was several years ahead of her in school. She’d have been peddling Girl Scout cookies when I was playing football.”

  Sidetracked, she raised her eyebrows. “Let me guess. You were the quarterback.”

  “I was. But how did you know that? Has my mother been showing you her family album?”

  “Bobby mentioned something about high school.” But now that she thought about it, she’d love to see the Morgan family photo album. “He seems to have a pretty big sense of obligation to you.”

  “I wish he’d forget all that.” Trey’s hands moved on the steering wheel. “Maybe I kept him from being stuffed into a locker a time or two. That’s no big deal.”

  “It might to the one being stuffed.” That wouldn’t have happened to Trey, she felt sure. He would always have been the Big Man on Campus. “But about Cherry—”

  “What about Cherry? We’ll be at her friend’s house in a minute. She probably knows more about Cherry than I do.”

  “It would help me to know what to ask if I had a better sense of what she was like,” she improvised. “As it is, she’s a body in a crime-scene photo to me.”

  The lines in his face deepened, and his hands moved again on the leather-padded wheel. “That wouldn’t give you much of an impression, I guess. But I still don’t see what I can tell you.”

  “You went to the inn for lunch sometimes, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. Once a week, at least.”

  “Just tell me the impression she’d make on a customer.”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether the customer was a man or a woman. She always flirted with the men. Maybe she thought it brought her bigger tips.”

  “Did it?”

  “How would I know?” Now he did sound irritated. “What’s this all about, Jessica? Why this sudden interest in what I thought of her?”

  She could evade the question, but that would be the same as lying, and she didn’t want a lie between them. “It was something Chip said, about how you were one of Cherry’s favorite customers. About how well you always tipped her.”

  The look he gave her set a distance between them. “I didn’t hit on her, if that’s what you mean.” He dropped the words like ice cubes. “If I tipped her better than most—well, I do that, for the most part. I try not to forget that I have it easy compared with a lot of people.”

  His lips clamped shut on the words, and he turned into the mobile-home park. He leaned forward, not speaking, obviously checking the numbers for the one she wanted.

  She’d succeeded in making him angry with her, and to no good end, as far as she could see. The car stopped, and Trey gestured to a mobile home on the right.

  “That’s it. I’ll wait here.”

  “Thank you.” She slid out quickly, glad to get away from the frigid atmosphere. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  He shrugged, picking up the newspaper that he’d stuffed into the door pocket. “No hurry.”

  Kristin McGowan was a very different type from Milly Cotter, the college student who waited tables to help pay the bills. Kristin stood back to let her enter the crowded living room of the trailer, pausing to switch off the television, and led her to a seat on the cracked-vinyl sofa.

  “Sorry about the mess.” She waved a vague hand at the clutter of toys, magazines and newspapers that seemed to cover every inch of the floor. She yawned broadly. “My mom’s watching the kids so I can get a little sleep. I hafta be at work at four, so maybe we can make this short. Don’t see what I can tell you, anyway.”

  Nobody ever did. “I’m interested in Cherry, and I understand you were one of her closest friends. Tell me about her.”

  Kristin shrugged. “Close—well, yeah, I guess. Cherry wasn’t the type to make friends with women, y’know? But we knew each other since middle school, and there we were working at the same place.”

  “So you’d talk. It’s only natural you would, when things got quiet at the restaurant.”

  “Mostly Cherry talked. She wasn’t interested in hearing anything about my kids, that’s for sure.” She ran her hand back through shaggy blond hair, yawning again. “Cherry liked to talk about Cherry, period.”

  “So I suppose you knew all about her boyfriends. Like Chip.”

  “Chip.” Kristin tossed Chip aside with a wave of her hand. “He was just somebody she went to school with. Like I said, she didn’t have women friends, so he was somebody to talk to. Tell her troubles to, I s’pose.”

  “Did she have a lot of troubles?”

  “Well, men.” She gave an expressive gesture that seemed to say men were always trouble. “Milly said she told you about Mr. Perfect.”

  “Your boss? She said he wanted to go out with Cherry but she wasn’t having any of it.”

  Kristin snorted. “That’s all innocent little Milly knows. Cherry went out with him a couple of times. But she figured out he wasn’t going to give up his wife or his job for her, so she put a stop to it.”

  It was a little different from the story Milly told, but it still didn’t reflect very favorably on either Cherry or her boss. “Anybody else she dated? Anyone she met at the restaurant, maybe?”

  “Cherry didn’t go out with customers. At least, that’s what she said.” Kristin’s voice expressed doubt. “She did hint around about a guy—somebody she said was a cut above anybody else she’d dated. Kept saying as how he was crazy about her, and he was worth a lot of money, and she wouldn’t be waiting tables at that place forever.”

  “Really? Did you ever see him?”

  “Nah. She was pretty cagey about it. I thought maybe she was just making it up to have someone to brag about, ’cause of Milly getting engaged and showing her ring all over the place.”

  “So you think there wasn’t really any secret boyfriend?” The faint hope went glimmering away.

  “Well, I thought that at first, but then she showed me…” Kristin stopped, giving Jessica a sidelong look that hinted at more.

  “What did she show you, Ms. McGowan?”

  “Wasn’t anything that looked that special to me. Just a funny-looking piece of old jewelry. But Cherry insisted it was worth a lot.” Kristin studied her fingernails with a casualness that was a little overdone. “She…um, she gave it to me to keep for her. Said nobody would look here for it.”

 
“So you have it.”

  Kristin dropped the pose and leaned forward. “If it’s important, seems like I ought to get something for it.”

  “I won’t know that until I’ve seen it, will I?” This might be a wild-goose chase, but it was the first tangible thing she’d run across, and she couldn’t let it go. “Tell you what. You let me get an expert opinion on it, and if it’s something that is useful to the defense case, I promise a reward. How’s that?”

  “If I was to take it to the district attorney…”

  “Then all you’d get was his thanks for being a good citizen,” she said crisply. “Seems to me you’re better off dealing with me.”

  Kristin stared at her for a moment, as if considering. Then she shrugged, rose and waded through toys to the television cabinet. She reached behind the DVD player and brought out a plastic sandwich bag. Opening it, she shook its contents into her palm. She hesitated and then handed the object to Jessica. “I’m trusting you to play fair.”

  “You won’t regret it.” Jessica stared at the object on her palm, and a shiver seemed to curl through her. It was a small tile, probably two inches square, with a hole drilled in it, probably to allow it to be hung from a cord or chain. It looked old, scratched and worn, with the black lines dim and faded.

  But she could still make out the design. It was the same as the symbol of that threatening note—the hex sign.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHAT JESSICA WANTED to do was research the pendant, if that’s what it was. However, Geneva had asked Elizabeth to help her make strawberry jam, giving Jessica a chance for an informal chat. So she headed back to the house.

  The powerful scent of fresh strawberries and sugar nearly knocked her over when she entered the kitchen. Geneva, flushed, stood mixing something in a kettle on the stove while Elizabeth cleaned strawberries at the sink with swift, practiced motions.

  “Hi. Looks pretty busy in here.” She’d taken the precaution of changing to jeans and a casual shirt. Good thing. Geneva was liberally spattered with pink splotches.

  “Come and join us.” Geneva waved a wooden spoon, adding a few more pink drops. “We can use all the help we can get, can’t we, Elizabeth?”